SeaRay Captain Bench Project

Repairing the Captain's Bench

1	OK, so I've got some rot in my captain's seat. Actually, one of the support arms for the quest seating (facing the aft) broke. It's all one piece of plywood. So, first thing is to get a 4' x 8' x 1/2" piece of marine grade plywood from the lumberyard.
2	In this picture, I've done some basic disassembly and moved the seat from its mounted position. It's all held together by screws and brackets (no glue in this cabinetry). You can see the busted plywood in the lower right corner.
3	Here is a closer picture of the damage. Water leading into the cockpit past the canvas caused this damage over years of neglect.
4	Ok, so it's a mess in here, but nothing a little elbow grease won't take care of. So, here are the before and after pictures.
5	Brackets, brackets everywhere.
6	If you look at these pictures, we can see large staples, as well as brackets, are used in the construction of the bench seat. These are all rusted to uselessness, so I removed them, pulling them out one at a time with plyers.
7	Finally, now that things are cleaned up, I'm ready to get on the repairs and reassembly. I've removed the broken piece of plywood, and I've removed all of the staples I could find. First thing, there is some rot down in the plywood. Not a lot, but enough for concern. So, a couple of cans of Get Rot from West Maring is pored into the crevices.
8	Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture. But I used the bad piece of plywood as a template to but a new piece of plywood to use as a replacement. See the finished picture to see it in place. As you'll see, I did not apply any laminate to it (maybe one day soon I'll do that too). In these pictures, you can see that I have removed the broken piece of plywood.
9	Reassembly is straight-forward. However, rather than use staples, I used 2" wood screws, and lots of them too. The wood screws together with the many brackets keeps the cabintry together nice and solid.